Love and War

'Something like that,' Bent said. The white whore groped for her wrapper. The young black girl, less frightened, watched from a spot near an open window. 'The charge is disloyal practices.'

'Of course it is,' Randolph shot back in a high voice, which Bent instantly loathed. The reporter's receding chin and pop eyes created a false impression of weakness. Instead of cringing, he swung his legs off the bed almost jauntily.

'Ladies, please excuse me. I must dress and accompany these thugs. But you're free to go.'

Shooting a look at the black whore, Bent brandished the LeMat. 'Everyone stays. You're all getting in the van.'

'Oh, God,' the white woman said, covering her eyes. The black girl slipped into a gown of ivory-colored silk, then hunched forward, looking like a cornered cat.

'He's bluffing, girls,' Randolph said. 'Leave.'

'Bad advice,' Bent countered. 'I call your attention to the nature of this weapon. It is what some call a grapeshot revolver. I have merely to move the hammer nose like this and the lower barrel will fire. It is loaded with shotgun pellets. I presume you appreciate what they would do to any face I chose for a target —?'

'You won't shoot,' Randolph said, bouncing on his bare feet. 'You government boys are all yellow dogs. As for that detention order you say you're carrying, toss it in the same fire in which you and Baker and Stanton burned your copies of the first amendment. Now stand aside and permit me to put on my —'

'Guard the door,' Bent growled to his helper. He hauled the LeMat up and across to his left shoulder and slashed down. Unprepared, Randolph took the blow's full force on the right side of his face. His skin opened; blood ran and dripped into white hair on his chest.

The white woman sobbed melodramatically. There were foot­falls, oaths, questions from the corridor. Bent jabbed the LeMat into Randolph's bare belly, then struck his head again, and his neck twice after that. Eyes bulging, Randolph pitched onto the bed, bloodying the sheets as he coughed and clutched his middle.

Grabbing Bent's sleeve, the other detective said, 'Hold off, Dayton. We don't want to kill him.'

Bent jabbed his left arm backward, throwing off the detective's hand. 'Shut up. I'm in charge here. As for you, you seditious scum —' He brained Randolph with the butt of his revolver. 'You're going to be fresh fish for Old Capitol Prison. We have a special room reserved for — Watch her!'

As Randolph writhed, the detective leaped for the black girl. But she already had one bare leg over the sill and quickly vanished. Bent heard a sharp cry as she landed.

Fists beat on the door. The other detective stuck his head out the window. 'Harkness! One's getting away.'

'Let her go. She's just nigger trash,' Bent said. He gave Randolph's shoulder a hard dig with the gun. 'Get dressed.'

Five minutes later, he and his helper dragged the groggy journalist downstairs. They threw his blanket- bundled body into the back of the van. 'You hit him too hard,' the other detective said.

'I told you to shut up.' Bent was breathing loudly; he felt as if he had just had a woman. 'I did the job. That's all Colonel Baker cares about.'

Brandt climbed into the van with them. Detective Harkness sat beside the driver. 'The coon got away, Dayton,' he said. Bent grunted, calming down. On the floor, the prisoner made mewling noises. Bent began to fret; had he really hit him too hard?

Ridiculous to worry. Far worse took place during many of Baker's interrogations. He would be forgiven. He had done the job.

'Let's go or we'll have the metropolitan police on our necks,' he yelled. The driver shook the reins; the van lurched forward.

Take the case of the Slaves on American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard. I dare say they don't altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but, they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence.

Wonderingly, Brett reread the remarks of Mr. Harold Skimpole of Bleak House. The author of the novel, which she was enjoying, had toured America, had he not? If he had traveled in the South, however, and if he had found the slaves merely a form of decoration, his understanding had failed him in that instance. Dickens was supposed to be a liberal thinker. Surely he understood what the Negroes really were — human beings converted to parts of an aging, failing machine. Perhaps the views of the elfin, carefree Skimpole weren't really those of the author. She hoped they weren't.

Tired of reading and a little put off by her reaction to Mr. Skimpole, she laid the novel on top of Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, which Scipio Brown had given her. The book, the most famous of the many in the escaped-slave genre, had been published a good eighteen years ago. But she had never seen a copy of it, or any work like it, in South Carolina. She was alternating Dickens with Douglass, and in the latter finding not only vestigial guilt but sympathy for the narrator and anger over his travail.

Brett lay in her camisole. Hot yellow twilight filled her room this twenty-ninth of June. She was exhausted from helping Mrs. Czorna scrub floors all day. Coming back to Belvedere, she had deliberately avoided Stanley and Isabel and their obnoxious sons, who were playing lawn bowls on the grass between the two houses.

It still surprised her that she was reading — well — differently from before. It was another result of long and frequent conversations with Brown. She resented the way he constantly thrust the issue of Negro liberty at her, but she was beginning to grasp why he did; why he must. She was also beginning to feel herself in the grip of uncomfortable personal changes.

One of the maids tapped on her door, announcing supper in a half hour. She rose reluctantly, splashing water on her face and bare arms. The yellow sun, growing red, sank in the west.

She hated to see sunset come. Fears about Billy, and her need of him, affected her most at night. In the last two weeks, coincident with Stanley's unexpected and still-unexplained arrival, Brett's fears had sharpened because of the military threat to the state. For days now, government workers and private citizens had been packing papers and valuables and leaving Harrisburg by rail, horse, or shank's mare. Last Friday, Governor Curtain had issued a plea for sixty thousand men to muster arms and defend Pennsylvania for three months. On Saturday, the invasion had been confirmed. Terrified officials surrendered the town of York to Jubal Early, and Lee's host was sighted at Chambersburg. The whole lower border was afire with panic and rumor, and the smoke blew to every part of the state.

A few minutes later, dressed and sweltering, Brett stepped onto the front veranda. No air was stirring.

'Brett? Hallo! Important news here.'

The thickened voice belonged to stuffy Stanley. In shirt sleeves, he brandished a newspaper on the porch of his own residence. She wanted to be rude but couldn't do it. The supper bell would ring soon; she supposed she could put up with him till then.

In the molten light spilling from the west, she walked next door, her shadow three times her size on the brass-colored lawn. 'What is it?' she said from the foot of the steps. She smelted gin on him and noticed his glassy look. She could hear the twins cursing and quarreling somewhere upstairs.

Swaying from side to side, Stanley held out a copy of the Ledger-Union. 'Papers got a telegraph dispatch from Washington. On Saturday' — his slurred speech injected a sh sound — 'Pres'dent Lincoln relieved Gen'ral Hooker. Gen'ral Me's now in command.'

'General who?'

'Me. M-e-a-d-e. Me.'

Drunk, she thought. At the other house, she had overheard some servants' gossip about Stanley's new habit. She said to him, 'I'm afraid I don't know either of those men or anything about their qualifications.'

'Gen'ral Me is solid. 'F anyone can stop the reb invasion, he can.' A nervous glance southward. 'By God, wish we'd settle all this.'

He struck his leg with the paper. The sudden movement threw him off balance. He prevented a fall by